Thursday, 20 June 2013

To
question is to disrupt. To challenge what is deemed as normal is to
initiate dissention. Questioning pre-established positions, assumed
knowledge and social constructs with questions that are both personally
relevant and timely is one of the central elements of a fresh and
independent engagement. Owen Flannigan in his The Bodhisattava’s Brain:Naturalising Buddhism
has put together an insightful and refreshing take on Buddhism, which
resonates in part with the Post-Traditional Buddhism experiment.
Flannigan asks questions of Buddhism utilizing his background in
naturalism that are not pro-Buddhist and that do not have the usual ‘loaded dice’
that Glenn Wallis speaks of over at his rambunctious blog. They take
the form of the sorts of questions that I myself have posed, and they
ask Buddhism to stand up to its own self-claims. That such an approach
acts on Buddhism, rather than passively receive tradition as a river of
prior knowing and expertise, is something that I believe needs to
constitute a modern approach to any critical engagement with learning
and knowledge, and in the case of Buddhism, practice. The notion of
acting on and being acted on are central to a phenomenological reading
of meditation as a radical technology and such an approach can be taken
to Glenn Wallis’ rather revolutionary heuristic seeing
it as a set of tools for ridding seasoned Buddhists of their shared
assumptions through destabilising certainties and reintroducing them to
the concept of impermanence as a reflection on existence, rather than as
received wisdom.

To
be awakened is to participate in creative acts of engagement with the
world in which we exist, including its historical and symbolic
structures. If anything, that is the game we are called to engage with,
if we awaken as human-beings and not as transcendent super-humans. These
creative acts of engagement are ultimately a form of communication.
After freedom is gained from the me-making self obsessions and their
rootedness in layers of conditioned illusion, to communicate with other
human beings may be understood as a recognition of that same potential
in the individual, but it may simply be the earned ability to see the
individual simultaneously as a product of their world and as a free
individual at once and speak successfully to both. For genuine
communication to take place we can either baffle and amaze our
interlocutor with our new bangles and jewellery, as some do in a sort of
weak narcissistic act of parenting, or we can communicate to the
individual as a resident of the world they inhabit and to the roles that
they are embedded in. It seems to me that the image of the Buddha that
has been passed down to us is of the latter model, even if it is a mock
image. It seems to me that many traditional Buddhist teachers, who may
be quite awake, believe that the best means for them to continue the
latter tradition is to spread and sustain the tradition that has enabled
them to reach the point they are at. But, for others, and I think this
is where a creative act emerges that is of greater value, a pushing
through, or delivery of a blindingly sharp observation of alternatives
that speak to the time we are in is the most powerful options available
to a person who is actually able to see and who feels that drive to
disrupt the norms of the status quo. Those are the voices that echo
through history in a sense, that are more likely to produce actual
change outside of a small circle of followers, or a shift in
consciousness within a collective. This type of act, or dedication to
pushing through the status quo is what is needed for any real change to
occur and for the awakening of an individual to be of any lasting value.

Within
Buddhism there are socially sanctioned means and avenues for expressing
the compassionate drive to help others, and alleviate suffering in the
world. The establishment of norms regarding the type of behaviour
exhibited by a semi-awake, or awakened individual may be laid out for
him or her. This gives social recognition and a meaningful role to the
individual, as well as a clear direction and avenue for expressing the
compassionate act. But what of those who do not exist within such solid
social constructs? And what comes next? Two key terms reoccur again and
again within Mahayana Buddhism: compassion and wisdom. Compassion seems
to provide a usable metaphor for proceeding after the dissolution of the
phantom-I. Compassion can be understood as to be with another and able
to comprehend their experience and their suffering. Empathy is a natural
sign of boundaries weakening between one individual and another and
their experience and compassion appear to imply that we are able to
connect well enough to another to know their experience. If the false
self structure is dissolved, then the natural ability to be with others
certainly must increase as a result. We may cease to suffer, but there
is no reason to believe that we stop feeling the suffering in others. I
would be highly suspicious of anyone who makes such claims.

Wisdom
may be in part not the ability to validate Buddhist themes, but an
increasing perception of what is unfolding and what is important within a
given circumstance through more complete and unhindered participation,
and hopefully the ability to communicate to that. Needless to say, these
two would really warrant a further essay.

Concluding the experiment

In
this essay I have attempted to reconfigure enlightenment taking
Buddhism as the essential source and then attempting to shed some of the
baggage that accompanies common attitudes towards enlightenment. I have
been a faithful Buddhist Modernist in the way David McMahon has defined
in his great book, by uniting disparate elements from different
Buddhist traditions, whilst utilising modern thought methods for
attempting a fresh look at a normally abstract phenomena. I have
abandoned reincarnation and mentioned science too. In my case this has
all happened consciously however and I have done my best to be true to
my remit – to avoid any talk of special, or consigning any particular
special category to Buddhism. I have utilised elements of Buddhism
consciously and realistically do not see how it is possible to achieve
the premise laid out in this essay for awakening without methods and
observations that have proven to work and that have survived long enough
to be available today and that emerge from Buddhism. Meditative
techniques that derive from Buddhism are an effective means for
developing clarity in awareness and thought and they provide a basis for
exploring the key themes of death, impermanence and the suffering self
and the phantom nature of the I. Buddhism is not a single authority on
any of these topics however. It also fails in many regards to provide an
adequate means for understanding the relationship between the
individual and society, which is no surprise considering it emerged as a
tradition over two thousand years ago when the world was a very
different place.

I
have tried to define enlightenment as awakening from and as freedom
from specific forms of entangled suffering and illusion regarding the
phantom-I. I have taken a model prominent in early Buddhism and utilised
by some modern Secular Buddhists and reworked it to extract a view of
four stages that may be loosely considered an overlay for a lived, human
felt adventure, through which, increasing freedom is obtained as we
wake up to the nature of the phantom-I, as it is, embedded in multiple
structures of me-making. I have tried to make it clear that I consider
it a perfectly human and perfectly possible endeavour and after all
perhaps not as complex as it is traditionally made out to be.

This
naturalised approach seems highly reasonable and functional, and a
further step in removing the mystique that surrounds the romanticised
interpretations of the path and lengthening of goals to abstract dream
like distances, out of reach of mere mortals, where hence we can only
dream of knowing. Such indulgent watching does not serve the purpose of
reducing suffering, whether emotional, mental, physical or other. Only
sober engagement and avid exploration will lead us into gaining clear
insight into how we are in the world and how this world is and how the
two interact and depend on each other and how we are both singular and
collective beings and the causes of our suffering and the sustainment of
that suffering is found in both

Monday, 20 May 2013

With desire we find
yet another problematic term, loaded with repressive and antiquated
implications. Desire, attraction, lust are typically rolled out as the bad boys
of the emotional and feeling realm and it is no surprise that such terms and
their Buddhist definitions conjure up notions of chastity, sexual purity and
other dull nonsense considering the Church’s influence still drags on insipidly
here in the West. As anyone with enough life experience knows, passion drives
action, attraction leads us forwards and lust as lustiness is healthy and a
sane part of pleasure in this insane world of messed up ideas regarding sex and
sensual pleasure. If we set aside moral arguments and agree that safe sex is
healthy and a natural part of a healthy adult life, and that religion has no
place entering our sex lives, then when desire emerges as a fetter to be
removed, the question arises – to what is it really referring? Many of the
holier than thou are often the ones with the sexual hang ups and naughty
(abusive) behaviour, so assigning sexual repression the label of holy or
spiritual is deluded. Perhaps the real issue is not rampant crazy desire for
sex, or food, or the latest gadgets and so on, which are really manifestations
of something deeper. If a person has moved through the first stage, desire is
less likely concerned with simple addiction, but is instead bound to the first
fetter of self-identity. The desire to exist, the desire to continue, as we
are, the desire to remain the same, the desire to change as we would like, on
the terms we set out, the desire to be seen as we would like, the desire to be
loved and accepted, and all the other faces of the self seeking its own
recognition, validation, and ultimately, survival, are where the real work
should take place.

Desire is in great
part related to what we are willing to experience as it is bound up with being
obsessed with maintaining identity through the narratives that move attention
and thoughts towards the past and the future. This movement of shifting attention
is infiltrated by other desires for control, for familiarity and for
confirmation of what is assumed, believed and often hidden, often subverted
through distorted attitudes and assumptions. Much of our desire is rooted in
the urge to avoid experiencing a multitude of sensations that upset the
delicate balance we seek to maintain over our limited range self. The immensity
of the still moving present, which contrary to popular belief can actually be
uncomfortable and immensely destabilising when met, involves a particular loss
of the boundaries that occurs when the fictitious self is loosened or dropped
for a period. It can be blissful, we know about this through contemporary
Buddhist claims, but the unnerving aspects concerning lack of certainty is often
not. This is actually connected to a fear of annihilation, which is one of the
rawest faces of the fear of the unknown that we avoid both individually and
collectively. This approach
to desire also encompasses the establishing of boundaries between experiences
and sensations. As we engage in attempts at controlling or fabricating specific
sets of experience and their accompanying sensations. We are also often
involved in attempts at controlling environmental possibilities in order to
force or restrict what occurs. This happens primarily through the establishment
of patterns that ensure consistency in the range of feelings and sensation we
open ourselves to. The habitual behaviour of seeking to fabricate, control and
avoid, limits our ability to experience an open relationship with a greater
potential variety of experience. We are basically overly selective and afraid
of what is unknown and resistant to what is new. Groups and societies function
in the same way with fear of the unknown being one of the most powerful binding
elements for a community and identity is not only informed by our particular
narrative, but is also bound up in group and societal identities and their
narratives. Needless to say, there are multiple core narratives that make up
our identity and they are drenched in history and ethnocentrism.

A valid criticism
that is often aimed at spiritual folk is that they too often fail to realise
that they are not necessarily obtaining any degree of genuine freedom or
radical transformation when they engage in a new set of rules within an
alternative spiritual community; formal, traditional, modern or otherwise. They
are simply exchanging one identity for another. Does growth, change,
transformation, healing, etc occur? In many cases it is likely. Unfortunately,
most folk seem to be happy enough to take this redefinition of their identity
and their new shared narratives as the be all and end all of exploring the
dynamics of the self, existence, freedom and so on, and simply settle back into
a new, more comforting form of the status quo in which the new improved version
of self is better able to function. Ideally, shifting social roles and
narratives provides the means for not only finding some balance and sense in a
human life, but for more radical engagement with the edges of what it means to
be human. Too often in spiritual groups there is an inability to recognise
where blind spots occur, where certain sets of experiences, sensations are
avoided and others are solidified collectively. Unspoken agreements on which
behaviours are to be commended or avoided solidify over time into rules and
regulations that instead of guiding individuals to learn and discover
alternative possibilities in behaviour, thinking, feeling, and imagining,
become a gated reality in which the full scope of radical breakthrough
regarding ignorance and suffering and their causes ceases to go deep enough.

The releasing of
desire is in a way the surrender of the habitual conditioned responses to
stimuli so that we are in a constant process of rediscovering experience anew.
There is a constant opening to engagement with the unknown in which the
familiar reoccurs yet reveals a certain vivid uncertainty that runs counter to
expectant perceiving. This is an odd concept in many ways and it is often
coated in flowery rhetoric within spiritual literature. It is not necessary
though to add additional flavours to a description of what is in reality a
serious and honest acceptance of the implications of impermanence. Things are
never really the same twice. There are seeming constants, but they are never
exactly and precisely the same. Because we relate to people, places and
experiences as if they were, we become lazy participants, hooking our attention
onto habitual responses to what is known, shutting out a great deal of what is
happening around us in favour of reigniting familiar feelings, thoughts and
reactions.

Hopefully, it is
clear that this releasing of desire does not relate to intelligent decisions
regarding changes to life style, work, and necessary, pragmatic change. It
really comes down instead to the willingness to experience the loss of solidity
and seeming certainty that this moving present can bring up when experienced
more thoroughly and without the certainties of our contriving behaviour and
self obsession.

In sum, desire as a
fetter may primarily be all about wanting out of full participation in this
still moving moment and the random, multiple and unpredictable experiences of
life. It therefore takes time to loosen, weaken and drop this fetter because
the layers of impulses, aversions and fabricating tendencies towards what is
taking place outside of our control are so well established, and further,
mirror the same collective forces that move around and through us. If radical
change is to be achieved, then happiness, bliss and joy cannot be sold as the only
path fellows on the way. Letting go of desire may have as much to do with
sobriety and facing reality and its loss of enchantment than it does with
chasing after peak experience. Humility and sobriety often emerge as travel
companions yet passivity does not need to accompany them. Rather than consider
this reconfiguration of desire as an act of passive acceptance of everything as
it is, we might see it as an act of waking up to the real circumstances in
which we exist, whilst understanding the limits that are present in our lives
and bodies. This may help us to see what is actually possible in this world and
enable us to take real steps, rather than inhabit inner or outer lands of
escapist indulgence in utopian thinking, daydreaming, or a resignation to hopelessness.

Friday, 17 May 2013

It
sounds like cheese, but it isn’t. So, what is a fetter? They are
typically defined as intrapsychic phenomena. Intra- indicates internal,
psychic refers to psychological processes. Fetters then refer to
structures that are embedded within the mental and emotional faculties
of an individual. Another way to consider them is as binding elements
that bind us to the cyclical nature of habitual states of being and
experiencing. Phenomenologically, it might be better to define them as
psycho-emotional patterns embedded, or centred, around a phantom-I
supported by fictional narratives. In either case, they are expressed
through habitual behaviour, thought patterns, feelings, beliefs and
assumptions both visible and buried, hidden under layers of conditioned
senses. There is of course a clear relationship between our inner
me-making and the social norms that affirm the I as existing and that
support its maintenance.

Our
whole social reality is based on creating subjects, consistent persons
that interact through reliable identities that are shaped from birth to
adulthood. One of the limits of Buddhism is that it fails to appreciate
the collective dimension of me-making and therefore is likely unable to
provide sufficient means for breaking through our embeddedness in the
collective me-making of our society, culture, generation, historical
phase, etc. Because it inadequately performs in the collective me-making
field, it can only watch passively, or offer a Buddhist identity as an
alternative means for navigating such terrain. Both are insufficient.
This probably helps to explain why those genuinely invested in
self-knowledge often end up in therapy, or simply leave Buddhism behind.

The
self can be understood as a story that we tell ourselves: we refine,
change trivial elements but basically maintain what is familiar. Since
we do not really have a single accurate definition of what mind is and
considering that Buddhist definitions are both contradictory and at
times clearly wrong, it is hard, at least for me, to define these
fetters as truths that exist within the structure of the brain, or
within consciousness. At this point recourse to a phenomenological
exploration of these fetters and how they might be experienced by an
average individual is the most logical option if we want to take this
model into consideration, because ontological arguments will likely lead
us in the wrong direction as far as the purpose of this essay is
concerned. A map is a map after all, it is not the geographical features
it attempts to record. I shall take Bas Van Fraassen’s
conclusions regarding Constructive Empiricism and take the Four Path
stages as the most workable option I have for now for attempting to get
at the thing, rather than an accurate representation of the truth of the
stages of the path. Taking a phenomenological approach, the question
that arises is how do these phenomena get experienced by a person and
how do we define those experiences in human terms?

First Stage: stream entry

Taking
nirvana as implying freedom from, the four stages can be defined in
terms of what we progressively get free of. The three fetters are given
as the following at the first stage;

2.Sceptical
doubt (specifically regarding; the truth of non-self, impermanence and
its implications, the root causes of the suffering-self)

3.Clinging
to rites and rituals (gaining sobriety on the nature of external form
& its relationship to actual, direct experience/addressing
dissonance) + (losing enamoredness for solely symbolic forms, or the
stabilisers of identity)

The
first fetter is concerned with how we actively view the self, or the I.
We might simply state that the first fetter involves the illusion of a
fixed and permanent self-existing I that is apart from the world,
connected yes, but separate somehow. Gaining freedom from this fetter
then would imply that we free ourselves of this illusion and begin to
see how the self as we thought it to exist is empty of any solid, fixed
features: it is basically hollow. As an intrapsychic phenomenon, that is
as a psycho-emotional structure, gaining freedom from this fetter
would imply more than mere visual perception. We recognise ourselves as
embodied through our senses and through our thoughts. Phenomenologically
speaking it needs to be experienced in the body and through tangible
sensations and not only understood intellectually, so that awakening
from the illusion of a solid, separate self and perception into its
mechanisms of support comes about through a unification of the sense
fields, otherwise known as synaesthesia. It is as if we need to be
convinced in as complete a sense as possible so that mere perception is
insufficient. This fetter is really the most important of all. Not only
does it represent the key Buddhist insight, but it opens the possibility
of us viewing others, experience and phenomena as also being devoid of a
permanent fixed self or nature. It is funny really, because this in
itself is not such a big deal. We know objectively through the sciences,
but also through western philosophy dating back to Hume that nothing is
fixed and eternal. To know it firsthand and to experience it override
the delusion of an atomistic I pushes against so much of what
constitutes our sense of self that it is easier said than done though.
That does not mean it is not possible however, or something that needs
to be relegated to future lifetimes or decades from now.

Sunday, 12 May 2013

I
am not a great fan of using foreign terms, even if they have gained coinage in
English, as however you come at them, they cannot help but carry added flavour
and nuances that get in the way of a cleaner reading. Asian terms in particular
seem to hold an exotic allure. The two workable western terms that could be
used to replace nirvana and bodhi, which emerge really without great
effort, are liberation and freedom and are most likely useful in this context
when the preposition from is added to both. To gain freedom from or liberation
from provides a compelling basis for defining more effectively what the thing
is and perhaps remains faithful to an alternative translation for nirvana
suggested by Thanissaro Bhikku and once championed by Glenn Wallis: unbinding.
The tendency to define nirvana as an absence allies it nicely with these two
English phrases. If we gain freedom from identification with a separate phantom
I and come to know that it is a socially constructed self, formulated within
the lyrical forms of our place and time and entrenched in narratives that
emerge primarily from our family, then we are released from the needs and
concerns and obsessions that go with those levels of identity. We are left with
the foibles and limitations of our particular physical structure and
continence, our particular flavour of character and the genetic predispositions
that make up our body, but we become free from the confinements of a network of
historical ties that are part of the claustrophobic isolation that constitutes
the phantom I.

What
we ought to be able to make tangible eventually is an understanding of what is
left once this form of freedom and liberation have been achieved. The human
that is left with the aftermath of having obtained Buddhism’s goal will still
be human, still be embodied, still be a psychological, emotional, social
creature that partakes of all the same bodily functions as any other human. So
what determines the usefulness of this attainment of actualised freedom from
emotional and psychological suffering and is that a fair way to describe what
has been achieved? Isn’t that it? Isn’t that the thing? What are you left with
at a human level and how does that translate into a form of communication that
may be useful in the ongoing struggle for greater justice, opportunity and
freedom for the many and not just the few? I for one refuse to believe that it
has to be a happy, shiny, smiley, geeky idiot that professes their great
freedom to the world and looks out wisely and compassionately onto an inferior
class of citizen. I met enough of those deluded individuals during the height
of the New-Age craze in the 90s to know that they are full of something dark
and pungent.

Thursday, 9 May 2013

After realizing that times
are a changing and that I seem to be the primary voice covering the topic of
Post-Traditional Buddhism at present, I have decided to set up a dedicated
website to cover this topic, so that the ideas related to this mode of
engagement with contemporary Buddhism can be more easily found by those
searching for alternative voices among the western Buddhist collage.
My hope is that others will feel a desire to contribute to some of the sorts of
deconstruction I am involved in that seeks to humanize Buddhism.

This blog will remain active, but
hopefully, with time, will start to become an Italian home for Post-Traditional
Buddhism; if I can find someone kind enough to help me translate the more
worthwhile posts here. Although my Italian is pretty good, translating into it
is beyond my capabilities, in fact, anyone who knows anything about translation
will be aware of how challenging such a task is, especially considering
the nature of this blog. This process will undoubtedly be a slow one, and for
now, posts will appear both here and over at my new websitehttp://posttraditionalbuddhism.com/, so you will be able to access my
writings in either location if you so wish.

Monday, 6 May 2013

Moving
to more faithful representations of the original terminology utilized within
the earliest records of Buddhism, we find the two terms bodhi and nirvana. The
oldest texts we have available within Buddhism are in either Pali or Sanskrit
and our first word, whose form is identical in both languages, is bodhi.This term’s primary meaning is to awaken, or to know. Interestingly, as
it was translated into other Asian languages when Buddhism migrated,
differences in meaning emerged, so that in Japanese we have kak, which means ‘to be aware’ and in
Tibetan we have byang chub, which means
‘purified and perfected’and as usual
the Tibetans are prone to hyperbole. We can continue by taking awakened as a more
accurate alternative to enlightenment, we then have something that is
immediately more tangible and also more faithful to its root meaning. To awaken
exists as a verb as well as a noun and relates to everyday experience as well
as more generally with awareness – we can wake up literally from physical
sleep, we can wake up metaphorically from ignorance. You can become awake to
confusion and patterned habits and behaviour at an internal level and to the
interconnected networks of relationships in society that lead and encourage
people to be asleep to the conditions in which they live and exist. The same obviously
applies to knowing. You can come to know how things are within you and without.
You can explore different fields of knowledge and come to gain knowledge
firsthand. In both cases there are tangible, replicable processes taking place
that can be understood by the individual and spoken of.

Like
the majority of key reoccurring terms within Buddhism, bodhi is subject to a variety of uses. Its meaning is not fixed
into a cast iron conceptual box, but serves different purposes within different
contexts. It does get used synonymously with nirvana, our second term, but is perhaps best understood as either
the experience or process of awakening, or the emergent processes that lead to
nirvana (to be discussed below). Awakening then could be the first half of a
two-part phenomenon and as such describes the process of becoming, or of
awakening into, the nature of nirvana. From this simple definition there is a
clear sense of a process rather thana fixed
goal.

Although
historically and contemporarily there are cases of both gradual and so-called
instant awakening, the latter may actually be a smoke screen of sorts with
claims being precocious at best and delusional at worst. The whole
idea of final vague ends, achieved instantly in a flash of spiritual wonder is
problematic for obvious reasons and seems to ignore the complexity of the
conditioned nature of the self and the dependency of our identity on our
relationship with the world around us. The idea that you could disband all such
webbing in a single moment seems delusional. Finality is problematic when
discussing such highly subjective phenomenon, lending itself to abstraction and
running counter to impermanence that is so central within Buddhism and which
speaks to the constantly changing and shifting nature of physical reality. A
sympathetic approach may also consider some forms of self-claimed awakening as
partial in the best of cases, or possibly complete within a very narrow set of
parameters.

Monday, 29 April 2013

Buddhism
is full of abstractions, terms that lend themselves to multiple translations,
conceptual reformulations and biases. Ridding ourselves of the temptation to
indulge in intangibles and absolutes is essential, in my view, to getting
anywhere in an honest revaluation of Buddhism and its content and this is
especially so as far as enlightenment is concerned. This is no small task as grasping
at spiritual claims can be very seductive. The way we talk about enlightenment
must be examined carefully if we are to make any sense of what it alludes to
and the first step involves examining the terminology that is commonly used to
define the thing. If the act of achieving some form of spiritual enlightenment
is a genuine and worthwhile human attainment that can exist as a tangible
possibility, then it must be able to be defined outside of a religious or
spiritual tradition’s idiom. The type of language that is so often used to
describe spiritual enlightenment is bombastic, supernatural, and usually out of
touch with the experience of the majority of the people within the traditions
themselves. What’s more, enlightenment is often described as ineffable, but that
leads to any manner of interpretation, and basically implies that such a
possibility is beyond examination, leading back to the dead end of trust in
wiser authorities and the indulgence in a division between those who know and
those that don’t. Perhaps what is needed is not more blind faith, but simply a
new way of talking about the thing. Rather than dismissive assertions that it
is something beyond words, we can look at the key terms within Buddhism and see
what they are actually pointing to and I shall attempt this in my own simple
way. Traditional followers of Buddhism will likely find fault with some of my
necessarily limited analysis, but I would hope that their critique is able to
avoid being overtly filtered through their own institutionalised Buddhist idiom,
and informed by thoughtful, independently minded critique.

Language
and experience are almost always inseparable. Language acts to give shape and
form to experience, as much as it shapes and forms experience itself. Even
moments of formlessness are followed by the form of conceptual formulations ofreflection on what occurred. That is at
least if we wish to share that form with others and not isolate ourselves or
keep as private our experiences of extended phases of clarity, open awareness
and the diminishing of distances. The structure of the language and the
terminology we use daily, as well as in our attempts to explain uncommon
experience, are shaped by the linguistic habits we have digested and habituated
through the common discourse we have with others, with our descriptions and
ways of talking about the inanimate world, and ourselves through our inner-dialogue,
or as Mitchell Green, professor of philosophy at Virginia University, defines
it, ‘the chatter of consciousness’. The same is true of course at a collective
level. Groups however small or large develop their own internal dialects that
shape, open and limit the scope of discourse. As Edward Sapir the linguist
observed:

We see and hear and otherwise experience very
largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose
certain choices of interpretation.

A
prime intellectual weakness amongst many Buddhists is that they become bound by
their own allegiance to codified norms of describing the phenomenon of
Buddhism, their tradition, their teacher, their role within that tradition and ways
of observing how relationships within their tradition unfold, evolve and are
managed. Buddhists follow a religion that holds out hope of freedom, yet they
do not seem to realise that when they sign up as Buddhists, they are actually
entering into a potential new form of entrapment: one of ideas and perspectives.
It might provide a more comfortable and more enriching reality than the one
they left behind, but the self-referential nature of most Buddhist groups does
not allow for such a conceptual possibility of confinement to exist and therefore
questioning Buddhism’s assumptions, norms and its ultimate aim often fails to
lead to discourse that might challenge the structures of their traditions and
give rise to creative and original engagement. There is such certainty within
Buddhist circles of their own truths and a sense of ownership of the answers to
life’s great questions and it is such that they rarely peek outside the door of
their tradition to check if this is actually the case and whether doubts, or
lack of conviction by non-members are not perhaps valid. Followers are unwittingly
duped and enlightenment remains as an ideological holy grail; a great promise
held out in perpetuity. It is solid enough to guarantee unending devotion,
ephemeral enough to never be fully grasped. Perhaps it is possible though to
ignore such games and institutionalised behaviour and to come at the notion of
enlightenment as a phenomenon of ongoing experience that can be examined, clarified,
defined and reasonably understood. Perhaps then its actual value to both
individuals and society may be examined, questioned and thought about more
soberly.

Friday, 19 April 2013

If
you are too well connected, you stop thinking. The clamour, the immediacy, the
tendency to absorb other people's thoughts, interrupt the deep abstraction
required to find your own way.

George Monbiot

Introduction

This
essay follows on from a previous article I wrote for the Elephant Journal, which
attempted to give a positive overview of Post-Traditional Buddhism, an emerging
form of modern Buddhism that is not embedded in traditional Buddhist structures.
Below, I explore enlightenment, its popular terminology, and a simple and
straightforward model for mapping it into four stages that hopefully works to
demystify one of the core abstract features of contemporary spiritual
discourse. I wish to continue to consider post-traditional possibilities in
approaching the topic of enlightenment in Buddhism in an attempt at a sort of
soft subversion of its central taboo. I will take Buddhist materials as sign
posts, rather than definitive truths in this exploration, so this work is
indebted to Buddhism, but I hope not overly limited by it. It is really an
attempt to push at the constraints of Buddhism and find an increasingly human
phenomenon that might leave behind the religious, and perhaps even the fuzzy notion
of spiritual all together.

I,
like many, feel that Buddhism has failed to evolve and live up to its original
promise to show us the way out of ignorance, confusion and suffering, becoming
instead too often a means for developing a Buddhist identity, or a much
taunted basis for the pursuit of the ever ephemeral goal of happiness. It
provides an immense wealth of invaluable material that can aid our
understanding of the human condition, techniques and practices that can lead
to insight and genuine breakthrough, as well as a moral framework that can
guide an individual to be less destructive, but at the same time, Buddhism has
stagnated in its traditional expressions, and in the West it has failed to
evolve into a truly new and radical form on any meaningful scale Instead it has undergone cosmetic changes and evolved into more user friendly forms that generally result in
what we might term Buddhism-Light. Rather than engage in a simple
deconstruction of Buddhism, I am driven by a compulsion to push the
phenomenological value of Buddhism into the shared, human landscape, unhindered
by cumbersome institutional politics, and traditional ideological ties. I
believe strongly that such ideas as freedom from suffering and liberation from
the claustrophobic, fictitious self are possible. I believe we can experience
immense care and empathy for other human animals and contribute to shifting the
momentum of history in a better direction. For me, leaving such possibilities
to Buddhism, or any other religion for that matter, is no longer intellectually
viable, and it is possible that the further I go with my own reconfiguring, the
more likely it is that post-traditional, will become post-Buddhism, but for now
the link remains and the project of reconfiguring continues to prove fruitful.

For
those who are unaware of the notion of Post-Traditional Buddhism, it means what
it says: after tradition, outside of tradition, but not abandoning Buddhism.
Post-traditional means engaging critically and utilizing other
sources of knowledge to explore Buddhism, but more importantly, risking everything that
is personally held dear about it to come to a more honest and authentic
reading and engagement with it. It is an ongoing process and requires a
dedication to examining the explicit and hidden pay offs that occur through
allegiance with the Buddhist identity. Radical change as alluded to by the
figure of the Buddha is possible and it is likely found beyond the norms and
social boundaries of Buddhism and the identities that form within it. It is
often forgotten that identity is in great part the problem that is being got at
through Buddhism’s technology and that often followers confuse being a
Buddhist, with doing Buddhism, and both of those with simply exploring the
human condition and seeing a way to engage with it on terms different to those
promulgated by whatever passes as normal in the time and place in which they exist.

A
post-traditional approach is unbeholden to traditional notions of ownership
over Buddhist teachings, but does not jettison Buddhism’s wealth. It does
however refuse special claims or categories for Buddhisms, Buddhists or
Buddhist insights and willingly expects the materials that emerge from Buddhism
to be able to stand alone, without special faith, insider trading of special
knowledge, or a privileged status to validate their veracity. Therefore there
will be no allowance given to special claims of super powers, non-human
attainments and ultimate or omniscient knowing, being, or otherwise: a
post-traditional approach is unwilling to allow for privileged positions of
apparent knowing to determine the direction of discourse, or silence critique. Because
it is post-traditional, this piece is an exploration unhindered by the social
mores of any specific Buddhist community, where discussing enlightenment and
claims to such are taboo, and where norms regarding Buddhism’s goal are
established and often act to limit creative and critical engagement regarding
its obtainment, or lack thereof. Leaving aside such baggage, this piece
hopefully builds a case for a sort of reconfiguration of enlightenment, in
which its thoroughly human potential is made explicit. This piece was written
to fill a void. One that I see as being the denial of the more ambitious aims
of Buddhism amongst many contemporary practitioners in the West, including
those who self-define as Secular and who share many of my own views and concerns.

Tuesday, 9 April 2013

My
new bride on the spiritual path is perhaps best defined as Post-Traditional
Buddhism. A term I picked up from Hokai Sobol,
who is a Buddhist Geeks associate. What a grand title that sounds. Yet, what it
appears to imply in essence is the shedding of deference of authority for the
path to traditional Buddhism, whether it be Zen, Gelugpa, Burmese, or Hokai’s
own traditional roots, Shingon Buddhism. Emerging Western Buddhism that is
post-traditional is in a very early stage of birth. What follows is my own
understanding of this emerging phenomenon. Others will no doubt be wiser on
this topic, but for now too few voices are discussing it in the public sphere,
so, not one to fear for my safety, I’ll dive straight on in and do my best to
paint a rather challenging picture with words.

It
appears that the pregnancy started in earnest in the 1960s, although it seems
to me that the birth has only really begun to take place in this century. Whereas
Western Buddhism defines any form of Buddhism, traditional or otherwise, that
is alive and functioning on western soil, Post-Traditional Buddhism is perhaps
the most radical and accurate description for what is starting to show
tentative signs of flowering in both North America and Europe as a response to
the inadequacies of traditional Buddhism for a contemporary western audience.
Secular Buddhism is one of the more well-known faces of this emerging
phenomenon. Though most often this disconnected movement towards a radical re-engagement
with Buddhism is found in very small pockets of physically disconnected
individuals, couples and groups who are connecting primarily through the
Internet and through informal meetings. Some of them came together at the
Buddhist Geeks conferences in 2012 and 2011, but rumours abound that they were
infiltrated by many traditional Buddhist buddies. In fact a key feature of
Post-Traditional Buddhism is the mixing of old and new. Post-Traditional
Buddhism is built on the work that has come before it.

Interestingly,
many of the shared themes emerging within this movement seem to represent a
push by a new generation of practitioners willing to engage with many of the
issues which are central to the evolution of society as a whole at this time, and
many of which take up the central issues concerning post-modernity. Post-modern
thought seems to me to be central to the rewiring that is occurring in these
informal exchanges and elaborations. The sanctity of ultimate truth, the rules
of engagement handed down through traditional structures, the structures of
power that are seemingly inherent within institutionalised Buddhism are put to
the guillotine by Post-Traditional Buddhists in a symbolic act of reclaiming
the bare bones of knowing and experiencing.

It
seems that the more intellectually leaning members of this movement are concerned
with bringing together not just science and its analysis of meditational
results, but the Western intellectual tradition - from philosophy to
linguistics, to the political sciences and sociology - to bear on the interpretation
and working of Buddhism and its beliefs, core tenets and practices. This in my
opinion is where the tastiest of morsels can be found. Whereas science may
provide secular means for quantifying the value of meditation and its results,
other academic fields challenge and destabilise the ideological ground of
Buddhism, and in particular its traditional methods of delivery. Although
science may convince a whole new generation of businessmen, housewives and
school kids to practice secular mindfulness, those interested in the bigger picture
of personal and collective transformation may benefit greatly from uprooting
Buddhism from its traditional base of power in the hands of Asian teachers and
exploring it under the light of existing and emerging sociological and
philosophical enquiry.

Post-Traditional
Buddhism is a concerted effort to move away from the hegemony of what Dave
Chapman describes as Consensus
Buddhism. Because of this, many of its features are a direct refusal to
kowtow to traditional Buddhist forms and relationships. Post-Traditional
Buddhists are not content to swallow whole the doctrinal proclamations of an
exotic and powerful figure, whether Asian or otherwise. Post-Traditional
Buddhists are independently minded and determined to work through the raw
material of Buddhism on new and divergent terms. Post-Traditional Buddhists are
usually individualists and are incorporating a relationship with knowledge and
technology into their practice that mirrors the shift that has taken place in
wider society through the arrival of the Internet. Sources are multiple, open,
instantly accessible and dissectible. Post-Traditional Buddhism is not embedded
in a foreign culture, or in a foreign language. Post-Traditional Buddhism is
not based on lineage and the passing down of power and the ownership of exotic roles
such as Tulku, Lama, Rinpoche and Holy One. Post-Traditional Buddhism is not
based in a temple or a building which deliberately recreates the symbolic
reality of another time and another country. Instead it is likely taking place
near a computer screen, on the subway, or in the pub in multiple realities and
possibilities. Post-Traditional Buddhism both criticises constructively and
destructively. Post-Traditional Buddhism is very often results-orientated, but
does not necessarily take traditional Buddhism’s definitions of the goal as
accurate or realistic. Post-Traditional Buddhism is increasingly open source:
accessed through blog, podcast, webinar and free, downloadable content, some of
which may be illegal.

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About Me

I'm a Life Coach, Core Shamanic Counsellor and meditation teacher to boot. I also teach English in Trieste, Italy. I follow a non-traditional expression of Buddhism and also run occasional events over the border from Trieste in Slovenia on Shamanism. Email me if you're curious about any of these activities.

Benvenuti (welcome)

This blog started out as an experiment. It continues to be such to this day. The opinions you will find in these pages are my own, and like all material on this Earth, are subject to change due to that hidden factor of impermanence.

This blog started out as an experiment. Writing is an art and one which I am only now starting to develop any capacity in. All of my writing constitutes a learning process in the presentation of ideas, opinions and experience. I am no expert, but I am doing my best to develop and learn from each piece I publish.

This blog started out as an experiment. I've no idea where it will end up. I explore Buddhist and Shamanic themes in this blog. Both areas which interest a fairly small percentage of Western society. Therefore this blog is quite specialist. It goes one step further by not representing any particular tradition in either of these spiritual arenas, although I have grounding in two shamanic worlds; one a path, the other an approach to counselling. My experience of Buddhism is primarily within the Tibetan and Theravada traditions.